POLICE MENTALITY 1: A MILITARY PERSPECTIVE

by John Lee

"Naturally, the common people don't want war. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism."
—Hermann Goering, Reichstag Nazi Party President and Luftwaffe Commander in Chief, Nuremburg warcrimes testimony resulting in death sentence (committed suicide by cyanide rather than face the hangman)

Let's take a look at government cruelty, and see what parallels we can find to the "local military," i.e., the paramilitary police. "Winning hearts and minds" (WHAM) is a term our government used in Vietnam to describe its methods of "pacification" of its allies in (the former) South Vietnam. A modern-day police state must also use such techniques to keep its citizens in their proper place (even if it means the grave), for the express purpose of exploiting this valuable human resource to its maximum limit.

Citizens generally are happy to have a (hypothetically) strong government police force, one that (theoretically) protects them from the evils of a deranged criminal element. Happiness can turn to fear, however, when that well equipped, heavily armed government official detains you against your will, for committing the "crime" of minding your own business.

A look at the military mind-set can give insight into the attitude of many police officers (whether military veterans or not), and how that can affect you in a traffic stop situation. At any rate, it will give an indication of the government's mentality towards people in general. Like the CIA, the military is also intimately involved in violating the government's so-called Prohibition against illegal drugs, and will be discussed in a later chapter. Justified in the name of national security, of course (which literally legalizes all crime).

The American military is a major advertiser in the news media ("Be all that you can be," "Aim high," etc.); most of the media are already subsidiaries of industrial giants, who themselves are recipiants of lucrative Pentagon manufacturing contracts. Any attempt at investigative journalism is thus tainted by the specter of self-investigation. A reporter can lose his career (or life) just as quickly as an honest cop who seeks to expose his corrupt brethren.

People join the military for a variety of reasons (assuming they aren't forcibly drafted in time of war). It's a good paying job, and like the police department, one that not only pays for training, but pays during training. There certainly aren't many jobs that do that. The government will help pay for college for military recruits (and police recruits), and assuming the recruit can survive basic training, the new soldier (and cop) can take pride in "defending" the country.

Everyone joins for a different reason; mine was that it was the only way I could think of to get to England and drive race cars. I was willing to work on nuclear bombs and hi-tech Gatling guns, under the watchful eye of cops with loaded machine guns, in order to accomplish my dream. Yes, I did take pride in defending my country. I felt privileged to be included in "top secret" military intelligence briefings.

A few perhaps join for the adventure, such as pilots and special-forces, some of whom actually look forward to combat (and killing). The weird thing about it is that one can feel totally justified that the de-personalized enemy is getting exactly what they deserve. The media is a big help here. Some of these special-forces soldiers successfully kill dozens of people, one-on-one, before being discharged back into society. I have met several of these people, and they do appear to have some serious problems readjusting. If they ever wanted to tell their stories, the government has promised to "take care of them." The killing never stops, even in so-called peacetime. There are always dozens of little wars festering around the world at any given moment.

However, after awhile, after being involved in a few "police actions," reality sets in. It's not all about defending the country. Shooting and bombing unarmed noncombatants is no fun. (My basic military training included a class regarding the alleged military necessity of killing unarmed women and children.) Physical disability can end the career of even the most gung-ho special-forces jock.

Often there are confirmed reports of massive military collaboration between our leaders and the so-called enemy leaders immediately leading up to the conflict, paid for by the U.S. taxpayer. And plenty of commercial business collaboration after the shooting stops, with the enemy leaders still in power right where we left them. Soon, our countries are friendly allies once again. Lot's of dead and disabled soldiers and civilians, and lot's of taxpayers' money has changed hands. Either the military member gets used to these games, and makes it a career (whether they like it or not), or burns out and moves onward.

Many military veterans continue their government employment by starting new careers in law enforcement, at all levels. There are many similarities; uniforms, rank, forced loyalty to superiors, ruthlessly targeting the enemy (even to the point of duel to the death). Military members are willing to kill large numbers of people (the enemy), not only soldiers, but also defenseless civilians, in order to collect a paycheck, and perhaps a cushy retirement.

A police officer is willing to arrest large numbers of citizens, eventually thousands, and so what if a few noncombatants get falsely arrested, just to keep the profits up? He is even willing to kill a few of them. At least it assures he keeps collecting a paycheck, and his family keeps a roof over their heads and food on the table. "Us against them" mentality. "We are better than them" mentality. "We can do anything we want to them" mentality.

During wartime, police officers make sure the citizens obey military draft laws, rounding people up who disagree with a war and can't figure out a legal alternative. Even 17 year old kids kids (both male and female) who are too young to legally drink alcohol can be forced by the government to kill and be killed, during both war and peacetime. Yet once in government military service, they suddenly become legal to drink on government property, or in foreign countries where the legal drinking age is lower.

Back in the Revolutionary War, payroll funds ran low; aristocratic officers were risking little and getting paid generously, while the "cannon fodder," who had to do all the killing and dying, were paid nothing. Only when not paid do soldiers complain about killing. When rebellion within the ranks broke out, slave owner (and hemp farmer) George Washington had the striking soldiers (i.e., white slaves) executed for refusing to work for free. Washington became America's first president, under a Declaration of Independence that promised that "all men are created equal; that they are endowed ... with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

As long as the pay is good, both soldiers and police are willing to do whatever it takes to perpetuate their way of life and to hopefully expand "market share" and experience "company" growth, and death to any man, woman or child who gets in their way.

The national military gets its money from you once a year, on April 15th. And you know what will happen to you if you don't pay. Every year, the national government's IRS seizes 10,000 cars, homes or other property for nonpayment of taxes. Congressional hearings in 1997, provoked by a Newsweek magazine cover story accusing the IRS of breaking the law, prompted the US Treasury department to issue a report. The report agreed that the IRS tactics of "over-emphasis on productivity" and evaluating agents by the seizures and levies they made was unfair to taxpayers. The IRS, in a statement about the report, confesses this "may have caused some employees to make sometimes serious mistakes of judgement." The IRS, in its own opinion, also admitted one third of its seizures were questionable. "This is an unacceptable finding," the Treasury Secretary admitted. The Secretary promised strong action against the IRS's "emphasis on statistical goals and expectations," and was disturbed that these quotas "could have affected taxpayers' rights." The military spends $300 billion every year, and the IRS has to collect it from the citizens, by force, if necessary. As Will Rogers said in 1923, "The income tax has made more liars out of the American people than golf has."

Really, the only difference between the military and the police is that cops have to actually work to collect their money directly from the citizens every day, to cover their paychecks, or else they have to find a new job (the infamous and often-denied "quota" system). Both are licensed by the government to detain, interrogate, arrest and kill the citizens under their control.

Many Vietnam vets entered law enforcement after serving in the thirty year war. Looking into the mind of a soldier is not very different from reading the mind of an American police officer (and the American government that he works for). Abuse of power can take place in either one. In case you have not studied your American history lately, here's a brief lesson in government operations and law enforcement, during the American invasion of Vietnam, a nation with 60 million citizens:

Colonel Fletcher Prouty, a retired Air Force jet pilot who worked as chief of special operations and as intelligence liason for the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon during the Vietnam police action, tells us how the game was--and still is--played. Premeditated "constructive chaos" was is government's method of operation in all wars since (at least) the beginning of the nuclear age. It is also handy to keep its citizens guessing within the confines of its own borders, as well. The colonel writes:

"When Ho Chi Minh signed the Declaration of Independence for his new nation in September, 1945, he read from the text of that document: 'A people who have courageously opposed French domination for more than eighty years, a people who have fought side by side with the Allies against the Fascists during these last years--such a people must be free and independent.' Ho Chi Minh did not yet realize that the hated enemies of World War II were soon to be America's bosom friends. The former Fascists (who had helped kill 20 million people), Germany, Italy and Japan were now to be known as friendly 'anti-Communists,' during the instantly-created world-wide Cold War."

Colonel Prouty writes: This was "the same month that the Japanese surrendered to end World War II, [and was the same month] that shipment of arms and other war materiel - approximately one-half of that which had been scheduled to have been used by American troops during the invasion of Japan - from the stockpiles on Okinawa . . . . [that] an American OSS team turned. . . over to Ho Chi Minh and his military commander, Col. Vo Nguyen Giap. The other half of the invasion stockpile went to Korea.

"We do not have precise answers as to why we gave U.S. arms to Ho Chi Minh in 1945 and then a few years later provided Ho's enemy, the French with $3 billion of our arms," Colonel Prouty writes. This is, however, the way America currently creates profitable wars for its citizens to pay for and to die in.

In the buildup to Desert Storm, the White House illegally authorized four billion dollars of free weapons to be given to Iraq, laundered through BNL Bank in Atlanta. Former Secretary of State Henry Kissenger (from the Vietnam War) was on the bank's board, as were the White House's current Secretary of State and National Security Advisor. After the FBI raided the bank, arresting its president, the U.S. President signed National Security Directive 26, which ordered the Justice Department and FBI to "improve and facilitate the U.S./Iraq relationship." The government's Newspaper for National Security Alumni reported that Robert Bickel, a U.S. Customs informant, turned over documents to Larence Walsh, the Independent Prosecutor in the Congressional Iran-Contra investigation. These documents expose "the activities not only of the Iraqi government and its agents but also the activities of the U.S. government, its senior officials, and its agencies in assisting and supporting the Iraqi acquisition. This includes. . . quashing legitimate investigations of these illegal activities and in maintaining the covert nature of these activities by operating to discredit individual citizens who have come forward to report suspected violations."

During the U.S military operation in Somalia, ostensibly to aid the starving citizens of that war-torn nation, U.S. Air Force special-forces ("anti-terrorist rapid response team") were blowing up food stockpiles, according to a veteran who had participated and who currently works in law enforcement. (He eventually refused to participate in combat there, after seeing a seventeen-year-old female cop killed by machine gun fire, and after he had killed a seven-year-old girl playing with a disabled granade, blowing her into three pieces with a single shot from his sniper's rifle. As an undercover military cop assigned to a local U.S. high school, he was chewed out for not killing a student, instead he had merely disarmed him. Eventually he was discharged from the military for attempted murder of another military member who had shacked up with his fiancee while he was away fighting the war.)

All four of these expensive wars resulted in the "enemy" leaders remaining in power. Constructive chaos. Profitable chaos. Standard Operating Procedure for American government operations against the citizens of the world, both external and internal. During the Panama invasion, U.S. military forces arrested that nation's leader, Manuel Noriega, for allegedly dealing in illegal drugs. However, Panama's president had been salaried $110,000 a year by the U.S. government in oder to facilitate the U.S. government's Iran-Contra guns-for-drugs program, under the laws for national security. The flow of drugs through Panama increased after Mr. Noriega was put in a U.S. prison, yet no further invasion was made.

Colonel Prouty writes: The Saigon Military Mission (CIA) "were now teaching 'paramilitary' tactics--today called 'terrorism'--and doing all they could to promote the movement of hundreds of thousands of 'Catholic' Vietnamese from the north with promises of safety, food, land, and freedom in the south and threats that they would be massecred by the Communists of North Vietnam and China if they stayed in the north. This movement of Catholics--or natives whom the SMM caled 'Catholics'-- . . . became the most important activity of the Saigon Military Mission and one of the root causes of the Vietnam War. The terrible burden of these 1,100,000 destitute strangers imposed upon the equally poor natives of the south created a pressure on the country. . . that proved to be overwhelming. . . . They were transported, like cattle [aboard U.S. Navy ships and CIA airliners], to the southernment part of Vietnam, where. . . they were turned loose upon the native population. . . . Among these hundreds of thousands of fugitives were thousands of fifth-column Vietminh who concealed their movements southward within the greater mass of refugees."

This carefully-orchestrated American government operation, carried out over thirty years, created the conditions needed for the Vietnam War. The American government intentionally created the enemy called the "Viet Cong" ("Viet Kha," the local word for "beggar," was often misinterpreted to mean Viet Cong). Bingo, instant civil war. Two million Vietnamese people were eventually killed by American military efforts, including whole allied villages of unarmed women and children wiped out by one-on-one genocide. If it was too controversial to use American troops, the Korean troops were called in to do the dirty work. CIA reports admitted 1,500 "accidental friendly fire" type fatalities of unarmed South Vietnamese civilians, EVERY WEEK, year after year.

One particular "accidental friendly fire" incident illustrates what an organized group of our trusted government employees is capable of. Especially after they have been manipulated by their own government into the psycological nightmare of a no-win situation. On March 16, 1968, American troops entered the South Vietnamese villages of My Lai (Song My, aka "Pinkville"). Their orders were to massacre everyone in those villages ("search and destroy"), and in several surrounding villages, such as My Khe. Face-to-face killing of unarmed women and children required a special kind of mental dissociation by the individuals ordered to carry out the genocide. With their humanity disconnected from their souls, the killing by government employees turned into "blood lust;" many American soldiers first raped the women and children, then sexually dismembered their victims with their bayonets. Dozens of victims were rounded up and executed with machine gun fire. 500 defenseless civilians, our "allies," were murdered that day. This event was uncommon only because of what happened next.

An Army helicopter pilot, Hugh Thompson, witnessed the atrocity from the air. There wasn't an enemy soldier in sight (and not a single enemy shot had been fired). He put a temporary halt to the slaughter by landing his chopper and ordering his machine gun crew to kill any American soldier who continued to violate the law. "Open up on 'em - blow 'em away," he ordered his gunner. Defying a senior officer, he personally evacuated 10 civilians, including a little baby who had been buried under a pile of bodies. (Mr. Thompson reunited in Vietnam with this now-grown survivor in 1998, on the 30th anniversary of the massacre.) This one act may well be the gutsiest maneuver in American military history.

The entire historic episode was recorded for the Army's Public Information Detatchment, by photographer Ronald Haeberle and reporter Jay Roberts. Their assignment was to do their usual generic public relations story for the Stars and Stripes military newspaper. Afterwards, Haeberle recalled, "We knew we had something really hot, some very damaging evidence of an atrocity. . . . Something could have happened if they knew we had ratted, broke the story. Something could have happened to one of the people in our office. Their lives would be in danger, easily disposed of, it's called 'fragging.'"

While still in Vietnam, 21 year old Ronald Ridenhour was witness to a confession from one of his fellow soldiers who had followed the unlawful orders given in My Lai (most of the soldiers had refused to follow their orders out of common sense). Ridenhour, disgusted and revolted that his best friends had become mass murderers, began to track down other witnesses, both participants and those who refused. Instead of choosing vigilante justice (fragging), he decided to report the war crime, and seek legal punishment for those responsible. "It was a hard choice but I had to make the one that I had to live with." To ensure his safety, the recently-discharged journalism student sent his investigative report to thirty of the most powerful politicians in Washington. At that time, none in the media were interested in what the aspiring journalist reported.

Needless to say--within the government at least--a huge uproar followed. The Army's Inspectors General office assigned Colonel William Wilson to investigate. "If the Pinkville incident was true, it was cold-blooded murder. I hoped to God it was false, but if it wasn't I wanted the bastards exposed for what they'd done." His report included the transcripts of 36 witnesses, and was 1,000 pages long.

As the terrifying My Lai photos became public, Senator Stephen Young declared, "It must be made crystal clear that Americans do not condone such conduct, war or no war."

A reporter for the New York Daily News wrote: "There is tangibly evident in the nation's capitol the recognition of the politicians that the impact on the public of My Lai cannot be reduced through the usual political devices for diverting the attention of the people."

The White House counsel, John Dean (who's wife was currently running a brothel to extort power from the Democrats), advised the president: "It appears that Lt. Calley and members of his unit secured the hamlet without a firefight, established complete control over the inhabitants who were unarmed, unresisting civilians, placed them in convenient groups and then shot them."

Daniel Moynihan, Councilor to the President, wrote a memo to the president stating, "How could it be that there is such a thing to be looked at? I fear the answer of too many Americians will be simply that this is a hedious, corrupt society. I fear and dread what this will do to our society unless we try to understand it."

Lieutenent General William Peers continued the investigation in preparation for filing criminal charges against (ultimately) twenty-eight officers, and nine enlisted soldiers. His investigative team interviewed 400 witnesses, and produced 20,000 pages of transcripts.

The government's military prosecutor, Captain Aubrey Daniel, wrote a letter to the president that pointed out that it is unlawful for American soldiers to summarily execute unarmed and unresisting men, women, children and babies.

Rule 916 in the Uniform Code of Military Justice dictates: "It is a defense to any offense that the accused was acting pursuant to orders unless the accused knew the orders to be unlawful." In America, it has never been a valid legal defense to claim ignorance of a particular law.

One of the unfortunate soldiers who chose to obey his unlawful orders "not to leave anyone alive," Varnado Simpson, years later witnessed his own son shot and killed outside of his home in Mississippi. He ran outside the house, "but he was already dead . . . he was dying. He died in my arms. And when I looked at him, his face was like the same face of the child that I had killed. And I said: This is the punishment for killing the people that I killed."

Mr. Simpson confesses what it was like to do his government's bidding against defenseless citizens of an allied nation: "That day in My Lai, I was personally responsible for killing about 25 people. Personally. Men, women. From shooting them, to cutting their throats, scalping them, to . . . cutting off their hands and cutting out their tongue. I did it. . . . I just went. My mind just went. And I wasn't the only one that did it. A lot of other people did it. I just killed. Once I started, the . . . the training, the whole programming part of killing, it just came out. . . . A lot of people were doing it. So I just followed suit. I just lost all sense of direction, of purpose. I just started killing any kinda way I could kill. It just came. I didn't know I had it in me. But like I say, after I killed the child, my whole mind just went. It just went. And once you start, it's very easy to keep on. Once you start. The hardest--the part that's hard is to kill, but once you kill, that becomes easier, to kill the next person and the next one and the next one. Because I had no feelings or no emotions or no nothing. No direction. I just killed. It can happen to anyone. . . . I have an image in my mind of it every night, every day. I have nightmares. I constantly have nightmares of the children or someone. I can see the people. I can go somewhere and see a face that reminds me of the people that I killed. I can see that vividly, just like it happened today, right now. . . . You know, I can't forgive myself for the things I did. . . . Yes, I'm sorry, I'm guilty. But I did it, you know. What else could I tell you? It happened. It can happen if you go to war."

After the death of his son, Simpson had many bizarre symptoms. One definition of hell might be post traumatic stress disorder. A lifetime of madness is a pretty high price to pay for an $80 a month paycheck.

On television, Mike Wallace interviewed soldier Paul Meadlo for CBS T.V. Meadlo had confessed to personally shooting 68 unarmed civilians lined up in a ditch. "They were begging and saying, 'No, No.' And their mothers were hugging their children, but they kept on firing. Well, we kept on firing. They were waving their arms and begging."

Paul Meadlo's mother, Myrtle Meadlo, didn't know anything about her son's experiences until the CBS interview was broadcast nationwide. "I raised him up to be a good boy and I did everything I could. They come along and took him in the service. . . . look what they done to him - made a murderer out of him."

Whistleblower Ronald Ridenhour feels sadness over his life's experiences in Vietnam: "Here were these guys who had gone in and in a moment. . . following orders. . . they do what they're told, and they shouldn't have, and they look back a day later and realize they probably made the biggest mistake of their lives. [There were] only an extraordinarily few people who. . . had the presence of mind and the strength of their own character that would see them through. Most people didn't. . . . They have to live with it."

Four Hours in My Lai, a book by Michael Bilton and Kevin Sim, chronicles this unusually well-documented insight into American military history. The documentary film based upon this book is quite chilling.

I bet the government school you attended didn't teach its students about this little footnote in American history. As General William Westmoreland, commander of the American forces in Vietnam, confesses, "Without censorship, things can get terribly confused in the public mind." However, there is much to be learned about what goes on in the minds of government employees who lose their cool and unleash themselves upon those citizens under their control (doing the dirty work for those above them who wish to benefit from their lawless atrocities).

In 1997, a battle was still being fought in the Pentagon over awarding the Army helicopter pilot, now a Louisiana veterans counselor, the prestigious Soldier's Medal for his uncommon bravery in My Lai, for turning his guns on American troops. The pilot had thrown away an earlier award during the war, the Army's Distinguished Flying Cross, out of disgust for the cover-up and media spin-control that had been going on. An officer urged the Assistant Army Secretary to hold off: "We would be putting an ugly, controversial and horrible story on the media's table. It's just my 2 cents but I recommend sitting on this completely until after the election." The lieutenant colonel pushing for the award points out, "I thought the criteria we applied was supposed to [be]. . . 'Is this fair to the soldier?'--not, 'How is this going to play to the press?'"

Coincidentally, my wife spent her childhood living one block away from the company commander responsible, Captain Ernest Medina. It's a small world. She had an uncle who had been a military cop in Vietnam. He was court-martialed and convicted over a friendly-fire shooting and killing of an American fighter pilot who was in a restricted area (her uncle is now a full-blown alcoholic, who willingly admits he is attempting slow suicide).

Amazingly, only the lowest commander was ultimately convicted, Lieutenant William Calley, America's most infamous war criminal. Although sentenced to life imprisonment with hard labor, he only served six months in military jail. Six weeks before his parole, a civilian judge overturned his conviction. Judge Robert Elliot wrote: "Keep in mind that war is war and it is not at all unusual for innocent civilians to be numbered among its victims. . . . It was so when Joshua took Jerico in Ancient Biblical times: 'And they utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman, young and old. . . with the edge of the sword.'" (Such is the attitude of the current Supreme Court and lower courts when it comes to criminal murders committed by police officers in the Prohibition Wars against American civilians.

The Federal Appeals Court in New Orleans restored Calley's conviction. The U.S. Supreme Court supported the appellate court's decision by refusing to hear Calley's appeal. But Calley was already free on parole anyway.

It makes one wonder if mindless killing machines aren't exactly what certain leaders want from the government forces, both military and police, regardless of how insane they may become. However, the commandant of the Army's West Point academy, Major General Samuel Koster, was fired from command for his role in the cover up.

One of the soldiers aquitted of war crimes at My Lai was asked if he now wanted to resign from the military. Captain Eugene Kotouc retorted, "Who would want to get out of a system like this? . . . It's the best damn army in the world."

During the Vietnam war, the American military purchased war materials from its Communist enemies it was at war with, since the Western world could not keep up with the expensive production requirements (more bombs were dropped on Vietnam than were dropped during all of World War II). On 18 December 1966, the Washington Post printed an article titled "Peking Sold Steel to Americans for Viet Bases." On 12 February 1967, the Washington Post printed an article titled U.S. Buying Magnesium from Russia." Again in 1967 the "Washington Post" reported that the U.S. military purchased cement for its South Vietnamese military bases from North Vietnam. Every major war in recent American history involved trading with the enemy (under official license by the U.S. government), and profiteering by American millionaires at the expense of the American taxpayers and the deaths of citizens forcibly-employed by the military. For instance, during World War II, General Motors, Ford Motor Company, Curtis-Wright Aviation Company, Standard Oil, ITT and Chase National Bank all conspired with Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, throughout the war, hoping for a fascist victory. The U.S. government gave them licenses to bypass the Trading with the Enemy Act, allowing them to supply the Axis powers with fuel, electronics, equipment as well as money stolen from France and the Jews. Hitler even kept Henry Ford's photograph behind his desk. ("Trading with the Enemy: An Expose of the Nazi-American Money Plot 1933-1949," by Charles Higham.)

Let's face it, if our government is capable of that, it's capable of anything. Hurting people and wasting taxpayers' funds is just business as usual for too many individuals. Blindly trusting the government is just as bad whether one is an soldier or a civilian, a cop or a gangster on the government payrole. And if the government cannot enforce America's laws in the world's most heavily-documented war crimes trial, what hope is there for citizens' protection from rogue cops, especially when there are no witnesses?

Like the Nazi's said in Nuremberg war crimes trials: "We were only following orders." Only 21 of their government employees were prosecuted after World War II (one other committed suicide before the trial began); seven were sentenced to jail, ten were executed, and one committed suicide after the death sentence (Hermann Goering). They had helped violently kill 20,000,000 people.

History tells us that is what war is, whether it's the Revolutionary War, the Indian Wars, World War II, Vietnam or whatever little war has been cooked up since. The military is constantly producing a steady supply of ruthless, war-hardened veterans for employment in law enforcement. It's the most natural place for them to go after their return to civilian life. These military-trained cops might just be the same cops who are driving around looking for their next DWI arrest. How generous do you really think these men would be with a motorist they had just pulled over? Especially if that motorist could somehow be depersonalized in some way? ("The mere Gook rule.") After all, they are not necessarily killing him, just dishing out a little justice for the greater good of society.

"The people are like the water and the army is like the fish," observed Mao Tse-tung.

Police are not just similar to the military. The police are the military. The local military. The combat troops on the front lines of battle in the profitable war on crime, including the wars on drink-driving and drug Prohibition. And they scare the hell out of people.

Another personal incident can shed light upon the skillful role our government plays in the manipulation of the American citizenry.

As mentioned previously, my job in the Air Force was aircraft armament and weapons systems specialist, i.e., nuclear-bomb loader. In fact, that is exactly what I was doing when a president of the United States went on live international television and declared that, "Russia has been outlawed forever, the bombing begins in five minutes." (It was just a joke, and he didn't realize the cameras were turned on. Somehow, we avoided another "Cuban Missile Crisis" and nuclear world war. Isn't it a crime to yell "fire" in a crowded theater?) Seeing as how our nukes were targeted at Western Europe around that time, due to the White House illegally and secretly selling off NATO weapons stockpiles to Iran and Iraq, that is a doubly chilling lack of intelligence. (The Alzheimers had apparently been in effect for over a decade by then, according to the president's eldest son, who wrote the then-governor of California did not even recognize him at his high school graduation.).

One morning in 1986, as I ate my scrambled eggs for breakfast, I watched live T.V. news broadcasts from Libya, showing a dead woman's brains splattered on the ground, as a result of a surprise American air raid (I can never look at scrambled eggs in the same way). A few minutes later, I went to work on the returning jets; our squadron's break room displayed a huge mural of a grinning skull atop an atomic mushroom cloud. When we had loaded the bombs the day before, we had assumed it was just another exercise, not the real thing. The Libyan bombing by F-111 aircraft based from England, was (fortunately) the only NATO-based U.S. air combat mission during the Cold War.

Colonel Robert Venkus, vice wing commander who helped lead the raid, alleges in his book, Raid On Qaddafi, that the U.S. federal leadership had apparantly attempted to assassinate the leader of Libya by targeting one of his homes. In the pursuit of media attention, the White House had modified the battle plan, tripling the number of aircraft, against the advice of military commanders.

This political override of professional military advice led to the international fiasco of one F-111 being shot down and 2 dead aircrew, due to sending in extra aircraft after the target had been obscured by smoke and anti-aircraft defenses had been alerted to the raid. 20,000 American soldiers had worked together as a professional team to attempt to apparantly assassinate a political head of state, and kill 37 innocent noncombatant civilians, including a daughter of Libya's leader.

Dr. Stoney Merriman

Despite the bold propaganda attempt to allegedly assassinate a world leader, and despite ingenuine denials by the Bush Sr. White House that it was not a murder attempt, at least one Pentagon insider alleges it was exactly the opposite. Dr. Stoney Merriman, a Master Gunnery Sargeant, military journalist and Public Affairs Chief for the Marine Corps (Division of Public Affairs) at the Pentagon, and a former newspaper editor in Carthage, Tennessee (Vice President Al Gore's hometown), said US special forces preceeded the air invasion. Their mission as accomplished was to meet Colonel Quaddafi and escort him away from the bombing zone at his home. If any other dignitaries were present they were to be protected as well. This was to prevent "an international incident" should a group of international leaders be assassinated at the same time. As Merriman put it, "You wouldn't believe what really goes on." Though retired from the Marine Corps in 1983, the master propagandist still worked as a contract employee on occasion, and alleged he was utilized during and after the invasion of Libya, presumably due to his expertise in working the news media machine. Presumably a first strike bombing that only kills a world leader's daughter, dozens of innocent civilians and 2 US pilots is not an international incident (though to be fair, this part of the fiasco was not planned by the White House or military commanders).

Senator Howard Baker and Dr. Stoney Merriman at University of Tenn.

Shortly after his admission of history, Merriman died of a brain tumor. As his wife described it, he sufferred a significant personality change prior to his early demise. Before dying, he completed his book on Prohibition in Tennessee, a biography of a retired bootlegger titled, Midnight Moonshine Rondeveus, Secrets of Luke Alexander Denny's Moonshine Running Adventures (1930s to 1960s), which was based on a series of newspaper articles he published in the Carthage Courier in 1986. Since Prohibition did not end in Tennessee with the national repeal of the Vorstead Act in 1933, the fun-loving gangster serviced thirsty Tennesseans until the 1960s, and occasionally thereafter as financial needs arose. (M. Stone Publishing, 209 Pine Orchard Rd. Smithville, Tenn. 37166, copyright 1990.)

Bob Woodward reports in his book, The Commanders, that the U.S. government routinely provides personal security for the leaders of African nations, as well as their presidential security training, even making sure that they stay in power regardless of internal political strife from angry citizens. In return, the U.S. government receives cooperation with its own agendas. As Colonel Prouty writes, American wars are initiated just as Nazi Germany staged the invasion by Poland for a gullible world audience -- and almost pulled it off. Like the Wide World of Wrestling, the winners and losers are predetermined. At least I no longer have to feel guilty that I had been manipulated into committing the crime of participating in the attempted assassination of a world leader.

Twenty months after America's bombing of Libya, Pan Am Flight 103, exploded at 31,000 feet. 259 bodies rained down on the roofs of Lockerbie, Scotland, killing eleven more people on the ground. Pan Am airlines declared bankruptcy due to customers' fear of being targeted by another bomb. American government investigative efforts officially allege two Libyan government intelligence agents planted the bomb, in retaliation for the U.S. military bombings carried out two years earlier. The U.S. government named the two agents, and issued criminal indictments against them.

Bush's CIA and Iran-Contra bombed Flight 103 and Pan Am out of business

However, Pan Am's own investigation found that U.S. government employees of the CIA had blown up the aircraft, to prevent a U.S. Army "hostage rescue team" on board from blowing the whistle on a Syrian heroin-dealing operation being used by the White House for its illegal Iran-Contra weapons sales (heroin is worth one billion dollars a ton retail, thanks to the Prohibition laws). Major Charles McKee had learned that the CIA's COREA group was aiding and abetting the drug dealers. He reported his discovery to CIA headquarters, but did not receive a reply. He then decided to bring his men home, without official orders, along with evidence of the CIA's criminal activities, and threatened to reveal his information to the public (The Crimes of a President, by Joel Bainerman). There were also at least a half dozen CIA agents on the doomed plane. Luggage belonging to CIA officer Mathew Gannon was the only item unaccounted for after the crash (McKee's luggage had been confiscated by the CIA during the crash recovery). Israel's Mossad intelligence agency twice reported the bomb plot; the first (against American Airlines) was prevented by German secret police, the second was reported to the CIA, who advised them: "Don't worry about it. Don't stop it--let it go." Pan Am subpoenaed the FBI, CIA, FAA, DEA, National Security Council, National Security Agency, Defense Intelligence Agency, and the State Department requesting documents relating to the crash. According to Pan Am's attorney Gregory Buhler, "the government quashed the subpoeneas on grounds of national security" (Barron's, December 17th, 1990). The United States government has either admitted its responsibility or been implicated in the destruction of many airliners and their occupants, from the Watergate investigation, to the Persian Gulf, to the Mediteranian Sea, to the Pacific Ocean, to right off the American Atlantic coast. Trigger-happy accident or political gain are the government's excuses.

The U.S. government and the news media still allege the Libyans committed the crime. In 1998, the Libyan leader said that "Asking Libya to hand over its citizens to America or Britain is a silly matter that makes us laugh, especially after the price we have had to pay." In the year 2000, a show trial was arranged in Holland with a Scottish prosecutor, to prosecute these alleged bombers.

I'm so proud to have been a part of Operation El Dorado Canyon (sarcasm). The only consolation I can claim is that our base did not have the latest version of F-111 aircraft and laser-guided bomb systems, so our base only provided the $50 million radar-jamming aircraft, rather than actual bombers, so I can almost tell myself that I had nothing to do with the mess. The White House attempt to lay the blame of the Pan Am bombing on the backs of the Air Force and Navy were at least disproven by Pan Am's own investigators, so I don't have to feel guilty about that either (other than it was my own government that murdered all those people).

Associated Retired Aviation Professionals
TWA Flight 800 and other crashes
http://www.twa800.com

Footnotes: Between 300,000 and 700,000 US soldiers died as a result of the "Vietnam War", thanks to Agent-Orange chemtrails - NOT the 58,000 souls carved into the Washington DC memorial. As late as 2003, the Veterans Administration admitted another "new" cancer approved for Vietnam VA disability payments, after a mere 30 years - IF the vets were still alive. More US soldiers died in the first six months of Iraqi Invasion #2, than died during the first four years of the so-called official start of the Vietnam War. Over 35,000 US vets and their families and associates died from Gulf War #1, NOT the reported 150.

Vietnam killing spree revelations shock US in 2003

Useful link: Toledo Blade website

Paul Harris in New York
October 26, 2003
The London Observer

At the height of the Vietnam War, civilians were butchered by an army unit and the carnage was covered up. But this was not My Lai. This bloody massacre has only come to light in the past week - and not one of America's elite corps of reporters can claim the credit.

It was a huge scoop. Yet the newspaper that uncovered the atrocity was not the venerable New York Times or the Washington Post, still resting on its Watergate laurels. Nor was it the New Yorker, famed for its in-depth journalism. It was The Blade, a daily newspaper with a circulation of just 150,000 that serves the Ohio city of Toledo, by Lake Erie.

For four days last week, The Blade ran its tale of the massacre of innocent Vietnamese civilians by a US Army unit called Tiger Force. The story was immediately hailed as the discovery of a 'new My Lai', the infamous massacre of Vietnamese villagers that lifted the veil on wartime US brutality.

America's larger dailies and TV networks were left scrabbling to make up the ground - no easy task. Two Blade reporters had spent eight months working solely on the scoop. Another had joined part-way through. Together, they interviewed more than 100 people, tracking down former soldiers in Tiger Force and finally travelling to Vietnam to interview survivors and witnesses.

'The reaction has been overwhelming. The attitude of the government for the past 36 years has been to keep this quiet,' said Ron Royhab, a Blade executive editor.

The story began with a tip-off to the Blade's Washington bureau about some classified documents. The information was passed back to Ohio, where a reporter, Mike Sallah, began to dig. That process began to turn up references to a secret investigation into Tiger Force. Requests for army documents were repeatedly turned down, meaning The Blade's team would have to track down witnesses and victims themselves.

The details of the scoop are harrowing, both for the Vietnamese survivors and many of the still-living US Army soldiers.

Tiger Force operated out of control in the Vietnamese highlands for seven months in 1967. Moving across the region, the platoon of 45 paratroops slaughtered unarmed farmers and their wives and children. They tortured and mutilated victims. A litany of horror has emerged - a baby decapitated for the necklace he wore, a teenage boy for his tennis shoes. A former Tiger Force sergeant, William Doyle, told reporters of a scalp he took off a young nurse to decorate his rifle. The Blade investigation concluded that hundreds probably died. 'We weren't keeping count,' Ken Kerney, a former soldier who is now a California firefighter, told the paper. 'I knew it was wrong, but it was an acceptable practice.' Another, Rion Causey, then a 19-year-old medic and now a nuclear physicist, talked of how villagers were routinely shot: 'If they ran we shot them, and if they didn't run we shot them anyway.'

The killing spree was either ignored or encouraged by army top brass, but when an inquiry did take place it lasted for four years. No one was charged. Details were not released to the public, and are still classified. Bill Carpenter, a former special infantryman with Tiger Force, believes the self-styled death squad's former commander, Lt James Hawkins, should be held accountable. He 'thoroughly enjoyed killing' and, now retired to Florida, still defiantly defends his platoon's wartime activities. 'I don't regret nothing,' Hawkins has said.

But memories of the blood lust run deep in Vietnam. One farmer, Nguyen Dam, now 66, vividly remembered being attacked. 'Our people didn't deserve to die that way. We were farmers. We were not soldiers. We didn't hurt anyone,' he said.

The Blade also found amazing stories from within Tiger Force itself. One soldier, Gerald Bruner, turned on his own men and ordered them to stop shooting civilians or he would open fire. For this, he was berated by a commanding officer and told to see a psychiatrist.

Bruner was almost alone in resisting the killings. Yet the brutality left its mental legacy. Barry Bowman, a Tiger Force medic, told The Blade he is haunted by nightmares after witnessing the execution of one elderly Vietnamese man. Others described flashbacks and many have sought therapy to cope with their crimes. Others expressed no remorse. Moreover, criminal charges are unlikely to be brought.

However, the series of stories about Tiger Force seems certain to put The Blade in contention for a Pulitzer Prize this year. In fact, the paper is no stranger to awards. The Blade is rare in modern America in being owned by a wealthy local family, the Robinson Blocks, who have a strong commitment to investigative journalism. That means money and time is available for The Blade's reporters to bring in a major scoop. 'We have the resources to do this. There are no shareholders to worry about,' said Royhab.

Another Blade investigation - into the effects of a deadly industrial hazard - was shortlisted for the Pulitzer in 2000. 'The Toledo Blade is not just another American newspaper. We are much greater than that,' said John Robinson Block, the family's main representative on the paper.

The Robinson Blocks have owned the paper since 1926 and are keenly aware that until the 1920s The Blade was a big player in the US newspaper industry, with a national circulation. 'I suppose we have the ghosts of that history still hanging around with us,' John Robinson Block said.

That history was revisited spectacularly last week. And, as John added: 'As long as I am around, we will continue to try to do things like this.'

JOKE OF THE DAY

Miltary Intelligence